The following is a crost-post from the Dark and Light forums.

I’ve eagerly awaited Dark&Light, and with the launch comes a few major teething problems that I am yet to overcome.

Firstly, as a UK resident, I have to pay in either Euros of US Dollars. Of course, at today’s exchange rates, this works out as:

US$54.99 = UKP£29.23
€54.99 = UKP£37.34.

I think I’ll pay in US$ thanks. Almost £10 cheaper to pay in US$?

Second problem - trying to pay via Click&Buy redirects me to the local UK partner BT Click&Buy - or rather, to an error page, telling me there’s a problem with the URL. OK, we can get around this by going to the main page.

Third problem, and I know this isn’t DnL’s fault - BT Click&Buy can’t seem to recognise the credit card I use for every other MMORPG I play. Oddly, it’s the same one I’ve been using for two years now. Worked fine for Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online, DDO and a few others as well (including some in Asia). It’s also the one linked to my Amazon account, and I never have any problems buying stuff from there.

I know this has been thrashed out before, but I really have to question why the decision was made to use the services of Click&Buy when Worldpay has a standard creditcard payment interface that just… works. Sure, have alternate payment systems to allow people to pay (as in my case) through their phone bill, but if your chosen payment provider can’t even process a VISA from a major international bank (it made about US$8billion in profit last quarter), it indicates a wider problem for your potential customer base.

Following the game & forums over the past year (I was almost a Settler, but the DnL site failed with an error every time I tried to reply to the invite email), the decision to use Click&Buy has been one that rankled me. I’ve never been comfortable with using a third party intermediary when it comes to buying things - I like to deal direct (and I sideline as an Identity Architect, so the philosophy of Identity and who has copies of my details is one I am very conscious of).

I really do want to play Dark & Light, but the company has erected too many barriers to entry. The first, and largest barrier, is the decision to outsource payment services to a third party. I don’t know who Click&Buy are, I’ve never used them, and I have no reason to trust them.

I’ll keep an eye out and see how things go, but until subscriptions are offered directly I think I will have to skip becoming a paying subscriber. I think I might spend my US$55 on another MMORPG instead.

One of the things I find interesting is that as a potential customer, the decision to use a third party identity provider (effectively) has been the primary factor in my decision not to play. The question here in my mind is entirely one of trust: I simply don’t trust the payment provider the service provider requires me to use.

In the current climate I would much prefer to deal direct with the company whose services I am purchasing, as there is no Identity Infrastructure in place that I trust to act on my behalf - there’s no Transient Identity providers, no centralised Identity Providers, and certainly no user-centric identity service that I could use. The company behind Dark and Light has chosen to require potential customers to jump through a series of hoops with a third party provider (in some reported cases including telephone verification of an account created with a credit card) before they can participate. Not entirely sure that’s a sound business practise…

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